The title of this science
fiction anthology edited by two respected names in gay publishing, “The
Future is Queer,” suggests a prediction for the prevalence and
acceptance of gender variance in the imagined world to come. Since
sci-fi functions as a kind of new mythology—analyzing values,
projecting trends, warning of dangers and creating self-fulfilling
prophecies—such a collection of stories about how gender variance and
sexual deviance will be accepted and even esteemed in a more
enlightened future time would be appropriate for the cause. The triumph
of science over superstition, tolerance over prejudice, and knowledge
over ignorance does promise better times for homosexuals of tomorrow.

But that isn’t what the
title turns out to mean. It’s more nuanced—sinister?—than that. The
prediction “the future is queer” uses the dictionary definition: what’s
likely to be coming down the pike is going to be very strange. Thing
are changing and changing faster than anybody can keep track of and
changing in ways we don’t expect or comprehend. So The Future Is Queer
is a lot queerer than a collection of utopian predictions.

In eight substantial
stories, one of them almost of novella length and one a four page comic
strip, seven women and two men address and extrapolate issues of
technology, medicine, surgery, artificial intelligence, cloning,
spirituality, etc. to suggest just how strange the future might be.The collection opens with
accomplished science fiction writer/editor L. Timmel Duchamp’s
intriguing—and gay male sexy—story “Obscure Relations.” A powerful
politician is secretly keeping a stable of clones of himself from which
to harvest organs in event of need. How this scenario would be worked
out is interesting: the clones are staggered in age, they’re not
allowed sexuality and are given drugs to curtail desire, they’re kept
sequestered and are raised like brothers but with personalities
suppressed. As the story opens, the eldest clone has murdered the
original politician and taken over his identity and stopped taking the
sex suppressants. When he returns to the secret compound for a little
R&R and finds himself enamored with one of his younger versions, he
is tempted to stop the sex suppressants for them all. The story raises
some very interesting questions about identity.

Joy Parks’ “Instinct”
tells of a future after same-sex marriage has become legal and gay
people have been assimilated into society—and out of existence. It’s a
world where all children are lab-produced, sex change is routine,
dating is by computer, and an underground railroad helps real lesbians
escape into secret societies where they can again be “different.”
Here’s a Cassandra call to gay marriage advocates! Be careful what you
ask for, you might get it. And Caro Soles’ “The Chosen Few” warns about
the acceptance of gays in the military with a tale of two male lovers
bravely, though suicidally, banding together, like Spartan couples, on
a mission in which the homosexual troops are intended to be sacrificed.
Being homosexual and childless might make openly gay/lesbian soldiers
expendable!

Candas Jane Dorsey tells
a wistful story about a circle of friends meeting surreptitiously to
celebrate the winter solstice after the new calendar has moved official
New Year to a more convenient time of the season. It’s a bleak future,
but the friends join in a Wiccan-like ritual to pledge their affection
and hope. “…the darkest evening of the year…” is the sweetest —and most
poignant— story in the anthology.

The comic strip by Neil
Gaman and Bryan Talbot (the two male contributors) warns of a future in
which deviance has been erased from history to create a “utopia” with
no problems! Q.E.D. Let’s not go there! The people are blanks.

Diana Churchill’s “My
Long Ago Sophia” tells of government meddling and tragedy in the life
of lesbian mothers. The protagonist’s trauma is resolved with the help
of a virtual reality device and a good dose of self-forgiveness. The
sci-fi gimmick of the V.R. machine deftly communicates a
psycho-spiritual lesson.

Psycho-spiritual lessons
are also the heart of the longest story, “The Sleep Clinic for Troubled
Soul” by Japanese Canadian writer Hiromi Goto. This is an impressive,
mind-bending, if somewhat disturbing story of a lesbian suffering
insomnia after a breakup who seeks help through a futuristic dream
therapy. Told from inside her dreams, the therapy reads like a
psychedelic adventure with wild special FX. The story’s about
integrating the disparate “selves” human beings carry around in their
memories; it’s a lesson about being whole.

Several of the stories
deal with transsexualism, envisioning a future in which sexual identity
is fluid and alterable. The final story, “The Beatrix Gates” by Rachel
Pollack—really a quartet of vignettes—imagines a cure for cancer that
allows people to be redesigned from inside at the cell level and
makes
“nano-transformo” —including sexual reassignment— unlimited. One of the
vignettes is an allegory about transsexual experience using “Red” and
“Green” as the mutually-excluding opposites instead of male and female.
Even though the metaphor comes across a little obscure, this is the
best description of transsexual drive I have ever read. It’s a
marvelous example of how sci-fi can remythologize the terms of common
experience to elucidate and give new and deeper meaning.

In the brief prefaces by
the editors, gay literary critic extraordinaire Labonté writes about
the veiled homosexual allure he found as a boy in sci-fi’s imaginative
futures. I resonated with that. Partly because it is dominated by women
writers, this anthology is not as overtly gay male sexual as Labonté
hints. But the portrayals of gay feelings—of both women and
men—throughout the collection seem accurate and insightful. And the
promise the future is going to be very queer indeed is
well-established. Maybe as a gay visionary, I’d prefer different
futures from these. But as a reader I was well-satisfied. My
imagination was piqued. And that is what sci-fi is supposed to do. This
anthology does it quite queerly.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.